I am shocked and disturbed by ASUS products' high ratings, given my experience, not only with this motherboard, but (more importantly) with ASUS utter disinterest in providing support for a very serious design flaw with this product: This board is completely incompatible with WindowsXP SP3. A design flaw, while quite a serious demerit from a consumer standpoint, shouldn't automatically turn one off to a company --- mistakes can and do happen even under the best of circumstances. The acid test of a company lies with how it responds to a customer affected by a known design insufficiency, and ASUS completely fails this test. When approached for assistance with this boards incompatibility with SP3, I was told: "Not our problem. Go to Microsoft and complain. We will do nothing." Since only this motherboard has this problem with SP3 (there were other SP3 issues, but they were related to the AMD processor, not the MoBo, and were easily addressed with a patch --- this is a MoBo-only issue, and only this model is affected), Microsoft, too, is passing the buck, leaving consumers of this popular ASUS product completely stranded! Both companies should be treating this as a serious concern, and working hard to help owners of this motherboard fix the problem and allow owners to properly maintain and update their systems. ASUS attitude is appallingly disrespectful, and contemptuous of the people who patronize their company. Consumers should beware of this company and its support conduct. I personally can never justify every buying another ASUS product, for fear I'll be left out in the cold if any other technical difficulty arises.
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UPDATE:
In response for a request for more information about the incompatibility of this MoBo with SP3, I submit the following:
I didn't go into detail in my original review about the SP3 incompatibility, because I was concerned the review had gotten too long, and because the purpose of the review was to alert potential users of the risk of very bad support and customer service --- imho the willingness of a company to back up a product, especially in the event of a clear design flaw, is a very important consideration, besides knowing all the technical specs, bells and whistles, and functionalities the MoBo (or other device offers). A component that can do everything under the sun (or claims to) is fun to see described in epinions, and indeed this Mobo (the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe) is loaded with features which others have described and even lauded here.
But support availability, at the end of the day, is **the** most important component in a device's functionality to be considered by a potential purchaser. Others have reviewed this MoBo to describe the neat tricks it can do. Not one of them, however, adequately disclosed a major deficiency, or (more importantly) how the manufacturer behaves once any or all these cool features stop working . . . and yet (if I may be peevish for just a second) they didn't get a NH rating for failing to uncover this very serious deficiency with ASUS and one of its very popular MoBos.
Having said all this, you said you wanted more information about the nature of the SP3 incompatibility. A very thorough discussion of this known problem can be found at:
http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/05/07/does-your-amd-based-computer-boot-after-installing-xp-sp3.aspx
In a nutshell: Two completely different processes led to a very similar malfunction --- upon reboot following SP3 installation, the system went into endless blue-screen restarts.
One of those processes (the one completely unrelated to ASUS or its products), AMD-based computers with OEM images triggered a crash due to the non-inclusion of an appropriate driver. The major player in this particular SP3 incompatibility, HP, quickly released a patch that solved the problem.
The remaining post-install crashes all occurred to owners of the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe. Superficially, it resembled the AMD situation, described above, and affected *all* users of this MoBo that installed SP3 (something that can happen quite easily if you allow Automatic Updates). But as time went by, it became clear that a different STOP error (STOP: 0x000000A5) was involved --- one which was related to ACPI or USB functionality, and which was not fixed by the patch that worked for the OEM image issue. Additionally, returning the CPU to a pre-update state was exceedingly difficult. It involved a messy use of the recovery console, and even then, the system, while superficially restored to SP2, intermittently froze or crashed. Ultimately, I had to do a clean reinstall of everything --- something that anyone reading this review will know wasted over a day of my time, and resulted in plenty of settings problems and the like.
Microsoft's position when I approached them was as follows: "It is the MoBo's manufacturer's responsibility to make its hardware compatible with our OS platform" --- a true statement. MS advised me that there was nothing they could do to address what to them was an obvious hardware issue. Additionally, the A8N-SLI Deluxe was (and to my knowledge remains) the *only* MoBo that couldn't handle the update to SP3.
Thus, when MS shunted me to ASUS, I tried repeatedly to get them (ASUS) to assume responsibility, or at least acknowledge that they were working with MS to find a solution for thousands of users of the affected MoBo. To my surprise ASUS told me, in no uncertain terms, on at least two separate occasions, that not only was there no such effort to find a solution, there never would be. ASUS position: The MoBo worked with SP2, and it's not ASUS' fault that Microsoft pulled the rug out from under ASUS by making SP3 incompatible with and ASUS component --- therefore ASUS has no further responsibility to resolve the problem. It made no difference to ASUS that the incompatibility was restricted to just this one MoBo made by ASUS, or that the result was to leave thousands of ASUS customers completely out in the cold.
If you refer to the link I gave, above, you will see that there are makeshift work-arounds that work for many people (e.g. inserting/removing USB components, adding PS2 mice, disabling APM, disabling ACPI). I tried all of them, and none of them worked for me (and there have been others who also weren't able to find a workaround, for some reason). But even if it had worked, why should ASUS escape *all* responsibility? How can they get away with throwing their innocent users to the wolves with just a shrug of their shoulders, with absolutely no consequence to them or their reputation? Why should ASUS users pay for a product that is offered for sale as WindowsXP compatible (which by implication also means updateable!), that cannot be updated with essential Windows updates? Shouldn’t ASUS disclose that they only guarantee compatibility for a limited number of updates, and shouldn’t the price of the product reflect this severe limitation? Why should ASUS users who pay for this MoBo, have to be satisfied with making it work with the equivalent of string-and-duct-tape workarounds within a few months of purchase, leaving the manufacturer free from all liability or responsibility? And what about the users for whom string-and-duct-tape workarounds do not work for whatever reason?
Aren’t these good questions that should be asked in a site like epinions.com?
I want to be fair and say that Microsoft’s own conduct is hardly above reproach. BOTH companies should be working together to address the problem so innocent people (the users of this ASUS MoBo) wont be victimized and left holding the bag. But above all, since the incompatibility is isolatable to a single hardware component (the ASUS MoBo), it should be ASUS that users should be able to go to, in order to procure a fix.
I hope this essay supplies the detail requested, sufficient to make this review more useful.
